CHAPTER XI
True to her word, Gwen did not appear in public that evening. She was not seen in her usual place on the rocks, nor did she go to the post-office for the mail, and Cephas Mitchell, passing by Wits' End at a late hour, failed to perceive her on the porch. Miss Elliott was there with Miss Maria Skinner. She could not tell where her niece was. She might have gone to Sheldon woods or perhaps she was with Miss Fuller.
"She is not with Miss Fuller," Miss Maria gave the information, "for I saw Miss Fuller go off rowing with the Misses Hardy."
"Then I'll try Sheldon woods," said Mr. Mitchell as he went off. He pursued his way along shore to Little Harbor, mounting the hill which must be climbed before the road on the other side could be reached, and at last he came to Sheldon woods, but though he searched all of Gwen's favorite haunts she was nowhere to be seen. If, as he stood on the big bluff above Pirate's Cove, he had looked toward Jacques' Island, he would have seen there a boat moored, and if he had followed further on he would have discovered two figures sitting in earnest conversation. One he would have distinguished as Luther Williams, the other as Gwen.
The girl had left Wits' End immediately after dinner, had taken the lower way along the rocks to where Luther Williams always came in from his fish pound. There she had waited for him, going a short distance through the rose walk that she might be hidden from view by the thick undergrowth clumped around the great boulders. As Luther approached the spot where she sat she appeared, and he waved a friendly hand. "I was watching for you," she said coming forward. "As usual I want you to do something for me. Shall you be very busy this afternoon?"
"Not more than usual, and never too busy to do what you would like to have me."
"You are the most satisfactory man," Gwen smiled up at him. "What I want is this: I want you to take me over to Jacques' Island and set me down there, then when you have been to your pound I want you to come for me, will you?"
"Certainly. That is an easy task."
"Can you stay and talk to me a little when you come for me? I have a problem to solve."
"As long as you like me to stay I can do it."
"You are so nice; you don't ask unnecessary questions. Are we ready to go?"
"Yes, if Ned has come."
Ned was standing by the dory, and smiled a welcome to the girl. In a moment they were off, the strong arms of the two men giving long pulls to the oars which sent the boat swiftly through the water. The small island was soon reached. It looked a barren spot from off shore. A single tree, sole survivor of a less hardy company, seemed of great importance as it reared itself above the undergrowth of bay and blueberry bushes. There was no building of any kind on the little island, and as Gwen was set ashore she laughed. "I feel like Robinson Crusoe, but please, good man Friday, don't forget me and leave me here to starve."
"No danger," Mr. Williams assured her. "I'll be back before you have time to do much exploring."
Gwen watched the two men row off, and then set out to see what she could discover. "Blueberries!" she exclaimed after a little while. "If I had something to put them in I could pick a lot. Ah, I know, the hood of my golf-cape. How lucky that I brought it." She unbuttoned the long pointed hood, pinned it together and hung it on her arm before she set to work among the blueberry bushes. She was so absorbed in her occupation that she did not notice the return of the boat, and was surprised when Mr. Williams hailed her with: "Where are you, Miss Whitridge? Ahoy there!"
She made her way to him as rapidly as the scrubby growth of low-growing plants and vines would allow. "See what I've been gathering?" she cried. "Blueberries, ever so many of them. If we only had some bread and a lobster we could have supper here, though, oh dear me, you will need more than that, for you have a hearty meal at five."
"Don't you bother about me," said her companion. "Miss Phosie will save me a bite, but if you really would like to picnic here, there's no reason why we shouldn't. I've two or three mackerel saved out for you in the boat, and it won't take any time for me to row across and go to the Grange for some bread, I know they will let me have it."
"That would be perfect," declared Gwen, "but Aunt Cam doesn't know where I am, and I am afraid she will be worried."
"We can get back before your supper hour. It is not before seven, is it?"
"No, and later than that sometimes."
"Then we'll have two or three hours here. I'll go back for the bread while you go on picking berries."
He was off again directly and was not long in returning with a supply of biscuits and cake, a little packet of salt, and a bottle of water from the well. Gwen was watching for him this time, and was ready with a welcome. "Good man Friday, you are a fine provider. It will be such a real camping out. Are you very hungry?"
"Are you?"
"No, for I have been eating blueberries. Have some?" She held out the hood to him.
He took a handful and ate them silently. "What about that problem?" he said when he had finished. "It's a little early for supper I think."
"That's just what I think. Mr. Williams, do you believe it to be very, very wrong to marry for money?" She blurted out her question without preliminary. "I mean," she went on, "if the man has no vices, and hasn't a disagreeable temper or anything like that. Don't you believe that in the long run a girl would be just as well content as if she had married a man without a penny? It would be awfully hard to endure grinding poverty. I shouldn't mind being moderately poor, and going without some things, but a hand to mouth existence always—oh dear me, no."
"That's your problem."
"Yes, that is it. I can't very well talk to Aunt Cam about it, for she is sure to be sentimental and quote things about the uses of sacrifice in developing character, and about dinners of herbs and stalled oxen and things. She couldn't understand how I should loathe to wash my own dishes three hundred and sixty-five times—no, three times three hundred and sixty-five times a year, and cook my own meals as often, besides never having any money for operas and theatres and clothes. I think it is pitiful to see a girl, who has been bright and pretty, looking faded and worn in her threadbare wedding finery which she has turned upside down and wrong side out after she has been married ten years. Do tell me what you think about it. As an entirely unprejudiced person, who can look at the matter and get a proper perspective. What is your honest opinion?"
"I think," said Mr. Williams, after a pause, "you should ask yourself: How would it be if the man were to lose his money, or were to become a hopeless invalid."
"Gracious!" exclaimed Gwen. "That never occurred to me. I am afraid I have been thinking only of making the best of life with the compensation of having all the pretty things I wanted, and of going to Europe, and having a good time generally. I could even talk about steel rails sometimes, under those circumstances. But with no money! Oh dear." She saw before her a picture of Cephas Mitchell in shabby clothes, earning perhaps a meagre salary sufficient to keep up only a small flat in a crowded city. She saw herself struggling to make both ends meet, turning, contriving, mending while he talked common-places. Or perhaps she might be tied to a peevish invalid who would exact attention to his every whim, and to whom she must devote her days till death did part. She sat for some time, chin in hand, her eyes fixed on the waves breaking over Charity Ledge. At last she drew a long breath. "I couldn't, I simply couldn't," she said. "I should be perfectly miserable. I am pretty sure he is not the man to stay down if he does get a tumble, still one never knows, and as for health, that is even more uncertain."
"And it is too serious a matter to take risks in? Yes, I think it is. I knew a girl once who married a man for his money. He promised to be a success in the world. She wasn't in love with him, but she knew the marriage would please her family, so she married him. They were happy for a year or two." He paused.
"And then?"
"The man lost his money,—every cent."
"Then what happened?"
"She showed plainly that she had never cared for him, and so, you see, there were two persons made wretched, and the last condition of that man was worse than the first. He might have recovered from his fancy if he had not married her. She would have been free to marry the man she really did love, though her family objected because he was poor. So it was a pitiful disappointment all around. The circle widened and eventually included more than the two at first concerned. Don't make any such experiment, my dear child."
Gwen gave a long sigh. "My first millionaire, and to think I must deliberately let him go. Lots of girls do marry men they aren't madly in love with, and they seem to get along perfectly well."
"If there were no one else there would be less risk."
Gwen made no immediate reply. "Of course," she said after a moment, and lifting her head high. "Why should there be anyone else? There couldn't possibly be. That would be utterly absurd." She began to prod holes in the earth with a stick.
"Then why worry over it? Let things take their course."
"Oh, but I have to decide. I promised I would."
"The millionaire?"
"No. A—a girl."
Mr. Williams smiled. It was so very youthful to make such a compact. "Is it a question then of staying out of the race?"
"I suppose so."
"I don't see why one of you hasn't as good right as the other, and, after all, it will be the man who decides."
"Certainly. I said that. But you don't know the girl. She can always manage to make a man fall in love with her if she chooses. She is made that way and I am not. I don't mean that men never do like me, but all men like her, and if they don't in the beginning she makes them. She'll make this one, although she is sufficiently loyal to me not to really try to attract him, if I say I am deeply interested in him."
"I think," said Mr. Williams, "if you really want my honest opinion, that it would be much the best to go on as you have been doing, and let the future decide. There must be exceptions to all rules, and all men do not fall in love with Miss Fuller."
"Oh, how did you know?"
"I have eyes, little girl. Moreover, I know as a fact that one man has not fallen in love with your friend."
"You say that because you like me and want to increase my self-esteem. Who is the man? Ned Symington?"
"No." Mr. Williams looked grave. "Ned is a nice lad, but he is not thinking of falling in love with a—Highlander."
"Oh dear! I am sorry. I oughtn't to have said that. I never think of you as one of these dear fisher folk, and I forget to be sufficiently considerate sometimes. I wonder who has been making a confidant of you. I suppose you will not tell."
"No."
"Then I must simply take your word for it, and believe that some one worships from afar. It is rather a flattering and agreeable thought."
"There doesn't seem much hope for him," Luther Williams went on, "so long as you disclaim there being anyone else."
"I said it would be utterly absurd. Dear Mr. Williams, if you will keep my secret as if it were your own, I'll tell you that if it were not so ridiculously absurd to give the thing a second thought, there might be some one else."
"Why absurd?"
"He hasn't two pennies to rub together, and, oh dear, the dish washing ten hundred and ninety-five times a year. It is almost as bad to contemplate as the sitting opposite onion eyes and long necks an equal number of times."
"But if there were pennies, a moderate number, but still enough to pay for the dish-washing, what then?"
"That would be an entirely different thing." Gwen spoke with satisfaction. "I shouldn't mind getting a new winter suit only once in two years, and I shouldn't mind a little apartment, one of those nice studio flats—" She broke off suddenly and the tears sprang to her eyes. "Oh!" she exclaimed. "Oh! Please, please, Mr. Williams—oh, what have I said? You'll know!"
He patted her hand gently. "There, there, little girl," he said, "never mind. It doesn't matter about my knowing. Do you suppose I'd ever betray you? But since I am now convinced of something I have only suspected, I'll be more urgent in begging you not to think for one moment of marrying a man you do not love. Don't do it, Miss Whitridge."
"Then I'll not marry at all," said Gwen, caressing the man's rough sleeve. "Aunt Cam and I can go on as we have been doing. We are very comfortable in our little suite of rooms. But, please, Mr. Williams, don't call me Miss Whitridge. Call me by my first name as you do the girls on the island. Call me Gwen."
"And what will you call me?"
"Everyone calls you Mr. Williams."
"But you are not everyone."
"No, I like to be a special kind of friend. I would call you Uncle Luther, but I don't like that, for once there was an old colored man who used to work for us and I called him that. I know,—if you don't mind it, I'll call you Daddy Lu."
"IF YOU DON'T MIND IT, I'LL CALL YOU DADDY LU."
"IF YOU DON'T MIND IT, I'LL CALL YOU DADDY LU."
"IF YOU DON'T MIND IT, I'LL CALL YOU DADDY LU."
The smile which irradiated the man's face was brighter than anyone on Fielding's Island had ever seen. "Will you call me that?" he exclaimed. "Will you?"
"Yes, if you don't think it sounds disrespectful. I won't do it when anyone is by, only when we are having nice cosy talks like this. I can't tell you how much good you have done me. It seems much clearer to me now. I'll tell Ethel, and if she bears off the golden prize, well and good, though in the meantime I shall take the gifts the gods send, and have as good a time as I can. Now let's have supper, and will you cook the fish? You can do it so much better than I can, Daddy Lu."
For answer he went to the boat and brought back two small mackerel, well cleaned, then he made a fire, fastened the fish to a board and set them up to cook.
"It is a real Robinson Crusoe feast," declared Gwen, "for we have neither forks nor spoons. I shouldn't care to be so primitive in everyone's company, but I don't mind a bit with you. How good that fish looks. Is it ready? That's fine. We might make chop sticks out of twigs; Aunt Cam showed me how to use them, but I reckon fingers were made even before chop sticks." She was very gay and bright as she laughed and talked over the meal. Somehow she felt as if a great weight of responsibility had been lifted from her.
"No dishes to wash this time," said Mr. Williams as the last morsel disappeared.
"Not one; that is a great consideration. Perhaps, after all, one might get along in some such way as this. I'll tell you what I shall do: when I get utterly tired out from kindergartnering, I'll come up here and stay the year 'round, then we can go off and have feasts like this very, very often."
"That is quite a pleasant prospect. I quite approve of it, though it ought to be a long way off, for you must not waste your youth by giving up the things that only the outside world can furnish."
"The outside world doesn't furnish me with such a vast amount. Oh, I am not unhappy nor discontented, I am really a very fortunate girl, only there are times when a long vista of kindergarten teaching becomes rather oppressive, and if Aunt Cam should take it into her head to go back to China, I'd have to go with her or be left high and dry here unless—I did marry. I wonder if I ought to have more faith, Daddy Lu."
"In persons or things?"
"In a person. Ought I to think that genius will burn fiercely enough to keep up a furnace as well as a kitchen fire? You know the old nursery rhyme that says:
"'Will the love that you're so rich in,Build a fire in the kitchen,And the little god of Love turn the spit, spit, spit?'"
"'Will the love that you're so rich in,Build a fire in the kitchen,And the little god of Love turn the spit, spit, spit?'"
"'Will the love that you're so rich in,Build a fire in the kitchen,And the little god of Love turn the spit, spit, spit?'"
"'Will the love that you're so rich in,
Build a fire in the kitchen,
And the little god of Love turn the spit, spit, spit?'"
"I suppose there should be a fire for the pot-boilers as well as for the dishes."
"Oh dear, I suppose so."
"I think, Miss Whitridge—"
"Gwen, you mean."
"I think, Gwen, that you are quite young enough to wait and see."
"Twenty-one seems awfully old."
"When you are my age it will seem remarkably young."
"Perhaps. However, there doesn't seem to be anything else to do but wait. We'd better go back now, don't you think? It has been the loveliest afternoon, and I thank you so much for all you have said and done for a girl who has absolutely no claim on you."
"No claim? Hasn't friendship a claim?"
"To be sure, and you are the best friend I have on this island, and in the world, except Aunt Cam. I am beginning to count the days now, for the summer is going so fast, only there is always next year to look forward to."
They rowed around the outer side of the island, past Thunder Hole and Simms' Point. As they entered Sea Cove, Gwen caught sight of her aunt on the porch of Wits' End and waved to her. "So that's where the child has been," said Miss Elliott. "Well, she's perfectly safe with Luther Williams."
Gwen parted from her friend at the point where she was set ashore. She carried her hoodful of blueberries and a couple of mackerel as she came up to her aunt. "Spoils," she cried, "spoils!"
"I never knew you to go anywhere with Luther Williams that you didn't bring home spoils," said Miss Elliott. "Where were you this time?"
"Over to Jacques' Island. We had a picnic supper there, and it was fine for it was quite impromptu. He is just the dearest man that ever lived, Aunt Cam. I wish we could take him back to town with us where we could see him often. We made a new compact to-day. He is to call me Gwen, and I call him Daddy Lu."
"Daddy Lu! Daddy Lu!" Miss Elliott gave the girl a startled look. "How strange! Do you remember that is what you used to call your father?"
"I never saw my father."
"No, but there was a photograph of him which your grandmother had. I remember that you used to call it 'Daddy,' and one day when your grandmother was showing it to me she said, 'That is the best picture we have of poor Lewis,' and ever after that you spoke of the picture as Daddy Lew. You were about three years old then."
"I had forgotten," replied Gwen, "though perhaps that is the reason the name came to me so readily. It was my subconsciousness that suggested it."
"Very likely."
"At all events he seemed pleased and was so dear. We had such a nice talk, Aunt Cam. I had the blues frightfully, and now I feel as if a fresh west wind had blown away all the fog."
"There are fog banks along the horizon now," returned Miss Elliott. "I think we shall soon see it coming in."